


Touchstone

by AstronautMikeDexter



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-02-22 09:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 7,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2503673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstronautMikeDexter/pseuds/AstronautMikeDexter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few random season 4 vignettes centered on Carrie and Quinn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Flashbacks

**Author's Note:**

> I can't keep myself from writing sappy C/Q one-shots, so I'm going to try putting a few of them together in the same piece to avoid cluttering up the Homeland section. :) Any/all feedback is welcome.
> 
> Title comes from a quote by Rupert Friend: “Carrie has various kind of touchstones, and one of them is Saul, obviously, who’s a great figure of conscience and gravitas. And I think Quinn is increasingly becoming another."

_Quinn’s stomach drops as he realizes that their car is surrounded from all sides. He throws the vehicle in reverse to no avail. The mob keeps growing; their chances of escaping unscathed shrink with each passing moment. He yells over the noise for Sandy to ask how far out their backup is, even though he knows that they're too far off to help them. Behind Sandy's head, a crack appears in the window and grows outward with each blow._

 

_He turns behind him to address Carrie, who can’t find the spare gun. It has to be there; all embassy vehicles have an extra under the seat for situations like this. Just then, the mob breaks through and angry hands seize Sandy, opening the car door and dragging him backwards. He kicks and struggles, frantically yelling out to Quinn for help._

_A second window breaks and he sees Carrie recoil, but not fast enough for someone to grab her hair and pull her towards the sea of bodies. Quinn shoots and sees his bullet hit its target with horrifying accuracy. It makes no difference; it’s only two fewer hands out of the dozen that are clawing at her._

_“Quinn!” she yells for him, her eyes wild with panic as she struggles against the fate she knows would meet her outside the vehicle. He fires again but it’s too late; terror rises in his chest and he watches helplessly as Carrie is pulled towards her death. He calls out, but she’s already gone. Quinn hears the sickening thud as the first blow lands, hears her scream his name for help that he can’t give her._

_“Quinn!”_

 

“Quinn, it’s alright,” he hears Carrie’s voice as the bloodied Islamabad streets fade away.

 

“Quinn, look at me... You’re safe, it’s okay. I’m right here.”

 

He sits bolt upright, breathing as if he had just sprinted a mile.  He looks around the room wildly, finally settling on Carrie’s concerned face. She’s in front of him, with her hand on his arm.

 

His panic ebbs slightly as he takes in his surroundings and reorients himself. He’s still in their surveillance room, remembers fighting Carrie when she insisted that he go home and sleep rather than taking another graveyard shift monitoring Farhad Ghazi. After a short argument, they had compromised by allowing Quinn to stay the night on the mattress set up in the corner (“just in case anything happens,” he had said as Carrie had rolled her eyes and scoffed). The sun was just starting to rise over the Islamabad skyline, casting patterns of light across the floor of the room.

 

“Fuck,” Quinn mutters as he buries his head in his hands and tries to slow down his rapid breathing.

 

“It’s okay,” Carrie says as she shifted to sit down next to him. "I used to get them too, all the time."

 

It’s not in her nature to be a caretaker, and she finds herself at a loss of how to comfort her friend. She remembers her first few months back from Iraq, and the sleepless nights that ensued… She had since made her sister prescribe her some heavy duty sleeping meds, preferring the nasty side effects over having to relive her translator’s death every night.

 

“Was it about Sandy’s murder?” she asks tentatively, already surmising her answer from his frenzied shouts a few moments earlier.

 

Quinn nods almost imperceptibly and raises his head. “Yeah. A little different each time, but…” he trails off. He wipes his brow on the sleeve of his shirt, tries to will his hands to stop shaking. 

 

Carrie moves her head so that her eyes meet Quinn’s. “We’ll get the fuckers who did it to him,” Carrie says with a reassuring half-smile. “You know we will.”  Her statement does not bring the relief that she intends it to; revenge is something he’s trying to avoid at the moment.

 

Quinn allows himself to stay like this for a few moments, with their eyes locked and her hand still resting reassuringly on his arm. He stands up suddenly.

 

“We should get back to the monitors,” he says, his back to her. Carrie’s mind jumps back to the suspect she was supposed to be keeping watch on, probably still sound asleep in his bed. “I can keep watch for a while. Head home and get some sleep, you're probably exhausted.”


	2. The Pocket-Dial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carrie's "Don't tell me you pocket-dialed me" seemed like such an odd phone greeting... I felt like there must be some kind of backstory to it.

Why the fuck was Quinn incapable of saying no to her?

 

The realization of what he had done by agreeing to join her in Islamabad didn’t set in until several hours after his conversation with Carrie. He was so close to getting out, and getting entangled in whatever mess Carrie’s made is probably the last thing he should be doing. It won’t look great to the CIA either, who already think that Carrie clouded his judgment in the aftermath of Sandy’s murder. If he rescinds his notice to join her overseas, it won’t help his case much.  Quinn spends the evening brooding and polishing off what’s left of the alcohol in his apartment, knowing that he wouldn’t be there to enjoy it for much longer.

 

He can’t even imagine the look on Adal’s face when he finds out that Quinn is back in the game, only because Carrie Mathison begged him. He would hate to prove the stupid fucker right after all of this.

 

Fuck her. If she’d known that he was so close to getting out, she probably never would have asked this of him… Then again, Quinn thinks bitterly, maybe she would have.  It was Carrie, after all.  She’d go to whatever lengths necessary needed to achieve her desired end; the way she saw it, his sanity was probably a small price to pay.  

 

Quinn finishes off his beer, picks up his phone and finds her number in his speed dial, pressing the call button two or three times before he actually hits it.  A sleepy voice picks up on the third ring.

 

“Quinn?”

 

He stays silent, suddenly paralyzed at the stupidity of his idea. Carrie speaks again, a little more alert this time.

 

“Jesus, Quinn. It’s 3am… Are you okay? Did something happen?”

 

More silence. Quinn puts his head in his hands. He hears Carrie mutter a few profanities as she hangs up the phone.

 

\--

 

Quinn receives a text message the next afternoon.

 

_“I got a call from your phone in the middle of the night…. Everything okay?”_

 

He grimaces, pausing before texting back.

 

_“Sorry about that… Must have pocket dialed you.”_


	3. Lie, Manipulate, Exploit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation between Fara and Quinn, during their stakeout at the shop. Not necessarily C/Q, but it sort of explores the morality of Carrie's behaviors in 4x04 and 4x05 and Quinn's response to it.

“So, it doesn’t bother you, then?”

 

“Hmm?” Quinn was jolted back to reality by Fara’s question.

 

“What we’re doing to Ayaan,” she replied, turning towards him with wide eyes before quickly bringing her attention back to the shop window to keep watch.

 

Quinn took a drag of his cigarette, considering his answer. “That kid had a life before we came in and fucked it up,” he said to Fara. “Two weeks ago he had a family, a girlfriend, on his way to becoming a doctor…” he trailed off. "We took everything he had away from him."

 

“Carrie keeps saying it will be worth it in the end, and I try to trust her. I _do_ trust her,” she corrected herself. “But when I dropped Ayaan off at the safe house the other night…” she turned to look at Quinn again, searching his face for some type of confirmation about what was going on there. “It’s bad enough that we’re lying about getting him out of the country and into a prestigious medical school. But what she’s doing now, it goes against his faith… I can’t imagine what he’ll be feeling once this is over.”

 

“If he makes it out of this,” Quinn added. Fara studied his face; he was staring out through the window as he finished his cigarette but he looked a million miles away. 

 

A small part of Fara had been looking for comfort and reassurance; this remark didn’t provide it. They sat in silence for a while, each lost in their own thoughts as they watched for the cleric to appear outside the shop window. 

 

“You didn’t answer my question before,” Fara pointed out a few minutes later. “About whether or not it bothers you.”

 

“It doesn’t matter whether or not it bothers me” he said, his voice sounding a little more unkind than he meant it to. He paused, taking a breath. “I’m not the one who’s making the calls out here.”

 

Quinn glanced at Fara and noticed that her eyes, still set on the window outside, were glistening as she blinked back tears.

 

“He’s only a child. I understand why we need him, I just don’t understand why it’s necessary for Carrie to get him into bed with her,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion despite her best efforts to control it. “That’s what she’s doing, isn’t she? I asked what her plan was once he arrived at the safe house, but she got angry.” Fara took a steadying breath. "She told me that it wasn't my concern anymore, not since I failed to recruit him myself."

 

“’Lie, manipulate, exploit,’” Quinn said through clenched teeth, parroting the words of their conversation earlier. She could hear the anger in his voice. He was silent for a few moments.

 

“Fara.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Don’t let her get away with treating you that way.”


	4. Misdirected

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set somewhere in 4x06. Written because I can't believe that this conversation hasn't happened yet.

Carrie tapped her foot anxiously as she waited for the elevator doors to open. She needed to get back to the control room to make sure that Aayan was still heading safely in the right direction. When the doors opened to reveal Quinn on the other side, she could feel her anger start to rise; he was the last person that she wanted to see right now. She stepped into the elevator and stared straight ahead, her jaw clenched angrily.

“Carrie, I’m-”

“Don’t even fucking start with me,” Carrie spat. “I’ve had it with your judgmental bullshit.”

“I was going to say that I was out of line this morning,” he said evenly. “I shouldn’t have made those comments to you.” Quinn knew that he was going to be sidelined for a long time if he didn’t attempt some kind of reconciliation; Carrie could hold a grudge for longer than he cared to think about.

Carrie scoffed. “‘Out of line’ is an understatement.”

“I told you a few days ago that I had been pretty far down the rabbit hole… I know the road you’re heading down because I’ve been there, and it doesn’t end well.” Quinn paused, trying to find words to justify his actions over the last few weeks. “I’m worried about you.”

“You’re worried about me?” Carrie said incredulously, her eyes narrowed in anger. “You know, I think I should be worried about _you_ … Ever since you got here, you’ve been acting more like a fucking mother hen than a black ops agent.”

Quinn said nothing, staring straight ahead of him in the elevator.

“And who the fuck are you to be questioning my morals, anyway? You spent the last ten years killing people for a paycheck.”

“I never claimed to be a good person,” he said in a low voice.

Carrie knew that she should stop, but all of her rage and frustration that had been pent up over the last week was spilling out and she didn’t know how to stop it.

“Whatever. I know you think I ‘fucked a child….’ But that’s a hell of a lot better than murdering one, don’t you think?”

She knew that she had gone too far from the look that flashed across Quinn’s face before turning stony once again. But a small part of her wanted him to feel the same hurt that she felt each time he questioned her morals; in truth, Quinn’s pontificating had hit its mark and made her job a lot harder than it had been before he arrived. She wanted that numbness back, to return to the comfortable autopilot that she had set for herself.

That same small part of her had been expecting Quinn to argue back, and to fight for the good in her that she could no longer see. When the elevator doors opened a few moments later, Quinn turned and walked away. Watching him retreat down the hallway as the doors slid closed, she realized she felt even worse than she had before. She knew her anger was misdirected, and that she was pushing away one of the few people who had always been on her side.


	5. Living Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’ve tried to stick pretty close to the show’s storyline in all of these vignettes, but I couldn’t help going a little off-script for this one.

Carrie ripped the headset off; she couldn’t listen to her mentor’s anguished shouting any longer. She willed herself to keep it together for a few more minutes, just until they wrapped up for the evening.

As she prepared to leave, Carrie felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned around to find Quinn watching her, concerned.

“You okay?” 

“Not really.”

“It was the right call,” he said evenly. His bright blue eyes burned with intensity.

Carrie said nothing, afraid if she did that she might lose it.

“Come on, you’re probably exhausted,” he said, motioning towards the corridor that led to their respective apartments.

“I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell won’t be able to sleep after doing what I just did to Saul," she said as they walked to their rooms.

“You won’t be any good to him if you’re dead on your feet tomorrow when we regroup.”

“Regroup? Is that what we’re going to do?" Carrie scoffed. "Who knows what they'll do to Saul tonight as a punishment for escaping... Or what Saul will do to himself once he's left alone."

She paused as she reached her door, turning back towards Quinn. “I know it’s late, but do you want to come in for a little while? I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until we have some kind of plan in place to deal with this clusterfuck.”

Carrie opened the door and walked to the kitchen, with Quinn following behind her.

“You want anything? Water, vodka…?”

He smirked. “I’d better not, thanks,” he said. He looked around, pausing. “How do you think they got inside your apartment?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” she said, sitting down on the sofa. Quinn followed suit and made himself comfortable in the chair across from her. “As far as I know, the only other key is the spare I gave you.”

“You don’t think they picked the locks, do you?”

“I doubt it,” she said. “The locks on the doors around here are pretty solid.”

“So you think someone is running around the embassy with a key to your apartment."

“I’m really trying not to think about it,” she said grimly. “The ambassador said they should be installing the new locks tomorrow, and I requested a security camera as well.”

Carrie looked down at her water glass. “We almost had him,” she said, perturbed. “We were so fucking close.”

“I know.”

“I was trying to do the right thing for once!" she exclaimed angrily. "I was trying to keep someone alive instead of…. Steering them to their death.”

“Which you did.”

“I don’t know what I did,” she said. “But I betrayed Saul. He was counting on me, and I betrayed him.”

“How could saving someone’s life be the wrong choice?” she continued, her frustration building. “But it was, because there are only wrong choices! And I’m finally seeing it now for the first time.” She paused, looking up at him. “Nothing good can come in this fucked up world we’ve made for ourselves, can it?”

Quinn sat in pained silence. There were so many times that he wanted to shake her, to somehow make her realize the dangerous path she was heading down. Now, as she sat across from him finally putting the pieces together, he had no idea what to say. He’d wanted her to come to this realization, but he never wanted it to happen like this. And he felt responsible for her pain on some level, for over-riding her call in the control room and prolonging Saul’s grim fate even longer.

“It’s fucked up, I know,” he said, careful not come across as sententious. 

“And it’s on me,” she said unsteadily. “If he dies, it’s because of me. All of this is just a fucked up chain reaction that came from my choice to drop a bomb on that wedding party.”

“Nobody could have known that all of this would happen," Quinn said in a low voice. "Blaming yourself... It's a slippery slope."

They sat together, each lost in their own thoughts. Finally, Quinn broke the silence. 

“We’ve been up for two days… I think we could both use some rest,” he said, standing up.

Carrie watched him walk towards the door. “Could I stay with you tonight?” she asked suddenly. “I mean, on your couch?”

Quinn's expression was unreadable as he turned to look back at her.

“I really fucking hate to admit it, but I don’t feel safe here anymore," she said apprehensively, running a hand through her hair. "If those assholes are low enough switch my meds out, I don’t even want to think about what else they’re planning to do." 

“If they could break in here, I’m not sure how much safer my place will be,” he pointed out.

“I know.”

He stared at her intently, trying to figure out what she was implying in those two short words.

“Whatever you need, Carrie.”


	6. Drugged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place somewhere early in 4x09 – There’s Something Else Going On. Written because I was really hoping we would see a CxQ conversation about what happened while Carrie was AWOL, and we never did.

It had been a long day, and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. Carrie was filled with anxiety and itching to go back and work on Dennis again, but she knew that she had to give it time before she returned to interrogate him. Never one to savor downtime (and she knew she’d never be able to sleep), she arranged a meeting with Quinn to debrief him on the progress with Dennis, even though there was very little to report.

“Have you gotten any news from the lab yet?” Quinn asked, changing the subject after he felt sufficiently caught up on the Dennis situation.

“Yeah, they called about an hour ago.” Carrie said. “Blood results came back positive for some kind of synthetic hallucinogen. They need to run a few more tests to confirm it.”

Quinn raised his eyebrows. “You mean they don’t know?”

“I guess there’s not a lot of research on that class of drugs, they’re pretty new. All the tech could tell me is that they’re twice as potent as LSD, and can be toxic in high levels.”

“Fuck, Carrie,” he said, sighing.

“I know,” she responded. “But even with that in my system, I don’t think I would be stupid enough to give anything up.”

Quinn looked down, rubbing his temples. “That’s not what I was worried about. They drugged you and kidnapped you, did who knows what else…” He looked back up at her, anger and worry etched in his features. “You could have died, Carrie.”

“I don’t think Kahn kidnapped me,” she said, feeling a little defensive.

“Oh, really?” Quinn said, incredulous. “You don’t find it unsettling that, after finding you in severe medical distress, he brought you back to his house? He could have contacted the embassy, or gotten you medical attention…”

Carrie frowned. She hadn’t thought of it this way before.

“You don’t remember _anything_ that happened that night?” Quinn asked, his voice low and serious. Carrie looked away, her lip quivering.

“Carrie…”

Quinn took a step towards her, putting his hand gently on her arm. “Carrie, what happened?” he said with dread. He felt sick as his mind raced with things that they could have done to her while she was drugged.

“Brody.” She said. “I saw… I mean, I hallucinated…” She paused to collect her thoughts, taking a shaky breath. “I thought he was there with me, talking to me.”

“Jesus, Carrie.”

Neither spoke for several moments. Quinn finally broke the silence. “I’m so sorry,” he said simply.

Carrie brushed off his sympathy. “About what? You didn’t switch my meds,” she scoffed.

Quinn wasn’t sure what to say. “Can you remember anything else?”

“I don’t know, kind of… I mean, I can’t even say when I really lost it,” she said, trying to mask the anxiety in her voice. “From what I’ve put together, I'm guessing that it was while I was at the hospital.”

“While you were visiting Aayan’s girlfriend.”

“Yeah. I don’t remember all of it… Things were off way before then, but I think that’s when it started to get scary,” She said. “I remember thinking that I was being followed. And I remember kicking you in the balls.”

“What?” Quinn said, taken completely off guard.

“I’m pretty sure I assaulted a security guard who I thought was you,” Carrie said, almost sheepishly.

Quinn raised his eyebrows. “That’s… Telling.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. That was a topic for another day; he was still trying to process everything that Carrie was telling him. “Who else did you assault?”

“Nobody,” she said. “I think. I don’t remember much after leaving the hospital. I didn’t even remember about Brody until Khan brought it up the next day.”

Quinn knew Carrie well enough to sense when she was starting to get upset; he also knew that this wasn’t the time to push her. “Come on, let’s go get some lunch. We can check on Dennis afterwards, that should give him enough time to mull things over.”

“I’m not hungry,” Carrie said stubbornly.

“When was the last time you ate?”

Carrie paused, trying to remember when her last meal had been.

Quinn gave her a pointed look. “We’re going to the cafeteria,” Quinn said, calmly but firmly. He stood up and walked to the door, holding it open for her. “Come on.”

Carrie scoffed, but she knew better than to fight him on this. Rolling her eyes, she stood up and followed behind him.


	7. Two Rabbits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quinn shares a moment with Astrid. Set in the middle of 4x11.

Quinn couldn’t sleep.

He was no stranger to insomnia, and was accustomed to waiting out the long and sleepless nights at this point in his life. Tonight, though, he felt particularly restless. Quinn had no doubt in his mind that the decision he was making to go after Haqqani was the right one, but he couldn’t shake the thought that this might be his last night as a free man... His last night alive, even. Back when he had been putting himself in harm’s way on a daily basis, it had become so second nature that he often didn’t think twice about it. Tonight though, even as his resolve was stronger than it had ever been, there was no peace of mind to be found.

He turned over, propping his head up with his arm, and observed the woman lying next to him. The moonlight gave her a quality that was beautiful and almost ghost-like, and her yellow hair was splayed out across the pillow. The white sheets, now a tangled in a mess around them both, had slipped down just far enough for him to admire her voluptuous figure.

As it had been doing recently no matter how hard he fought against it, his mind wandered back to Carrie. Wondering if she was safe, if she was still stupid enough to keep looking for him after the clusterfuck in the garage…. Imagining that it was her yellow hair fanned out on the pillow next to him. He’d never met anyone who stirred up so much raw emotion in him, whether it was fury or desire. Both, sometimes.

“Peter?”

He had been so lost in thought that he didn’t notice Astrid stirring. She looked at him with eyes that were sleepy but worried.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Nothing unusual,” Quinn responded in a low voice.

She smiled sadly. “Are you thinking about tomorrow? About Haqqani?”

Quinn paused thoughtfully, reaching over and playing with a piece of her hair. “Do you ever think about what life would have been like, if we’d actually gotten out?”

She sighed, sitting up in bed and wrapping the sheet around her. “This again…. You’re really stuck on it this time, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Your blond friend brought it up too, you know,” Astrid said, raising an eyebrow. “That you wanted out.”

“Really,” Quinn responded, trying his best to sound impassive. He turned away and looked out the window, hoping to hide whatever emotion was showing in his face, but the moonlight only illuminated his wistful expression to the woman next to him.

“What do you see in her?” Astrid asked curiously, curling her knees to her chest and studying him intently. “She’s beautiful, yes. But it’s unlike you to… I don’t know. _Care_ so much.”

“We work together. Don’t you care about your colleagues’ wellbeing?”

“Oh, don’t play dumb with me,” she said, swatting at his arm playfully. “I saw you almost every weekend for months, and then you disappear completely... You can't tell me that had nothing to do with her. I know you better than that.”

“You know I was stateside for a while after everything that happened with our station chief.”

“She’s the same woman you almost quit for last year, isn’t she?” Astrid asked, peering at him in the dark. “The one they put in the mental institution?”

“What?” Quinn asked, perhaps a little too defensively. “What would give you that idea?”

“Call it a hunch. That, and you got very drunk during my trip to Washington last year,” she said with a smirk. “You kept telling me how much I looked like her.”

Astrid saw a muscle in his neck twitch.

“She cares for you too, you know.”

Silence.

Astrid continued, despite his lack of acknowledgement. “I know you don’t think so. But she would have been on a plane back home days ago if she didn’t care.”

“We’ve lost so many people at our embassy already. She just doesn’t want another death on her conscience… Mine or anyone else’s.” Quinn lay back down, facing away from her and trying to make it clear that the conversation was over.

“I’m not upset, Peter,” she said, laying down next to Quinn and wrapping her arms around him comfortingly. “We both know how this works, no strings attached as they say…. And that’s why I like you. I’m just surprised, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well… Me too.”

They laid together in silence for several minutes, at the same time close and incredibly distant.

“There’s something that my father used to say to me,” Astrid said carefully. “‘Wer zwei hasen auf einmal jagt bekommt keinen’…. If you chase two rabbits at once, you wont catch any at all.”

“So, no rabbit stew for dinner tomorrow then,” Quinn deadpanned.

Astrid sighed, planting a gentle kiss behind his ear. “She’s a distraction, Peter. Try to get some rest tonight and then focus on tomorrow, not on her. I would hate to see you compromise everything you’ve been working for…. She’s not worth that. Nobody is.”

She paused for a moment, smiling sadly to herself. “I know it’s nice sometimes to think about leaving all of this behind, but people like us… You know we’re not meant for that life.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to hellyeahomeland for posting the name of Quinn's sexy German FWB, and then making me forever pronounce it as 'ass-turd.'


	8. Insomnia, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her heart constricted painfully as she thought about the German woman that Quinn was staying with, and the conversation they’d shared. ‘He thought you’d have more faith in him than this,’ is what she had said to Carrie. That’s not even what had stung the most. It was recognizing the closeness that Quinn shared with this woman, and realizing how little she knew about the colleague she trusted above all others.

Carrie couldn’t sleep.

 

She had given up on even laying in bed; every time her head touched the pillow, her mind would start to race with thoughts and images of her father. What had her last words to him been- were they kind? Curt? Angry?  When was the last time she had told him how much she loved him? She squeezed her eyes shut in a vain attempt to stop the tears from flowing as she realized that she couldn’t remember.

 

That’s how she found herself back in the control room, with the bright fluorescent lights illuminating the bullet holes that sprayed the walls. They were easier to avoid during the daytime, but in the total stillness they served as a haunting reminder of what they had all failed to see coming.

 

Carrie told herself that she was looking for clues to Quinn’s whereabouts- she was too emotionally exhausted to examine the truth and all of its implications. As Quinn’s superior at the station, Carrie had access to most of his personnel file. She knew that she wasn’t supposed to abuse this privilege. Snooping through to corroborate an offhand comment made by his lover was probably not in her job description as his boss… Still, she told herself that there must be some sort of clue in here about Quinn’s whereabouts. Maybe he had other connections in the city that she didn’t know about. Something. Anything.

 

Her heart constricted painfully as she thought about the German woman that Quinn was staying with, and the conversation they’d shared. She remembered fighting back an irrational urge to hit this woman and to tell her that she didn't understand, she didn't know Quinn like Carrie did. 

 

‘ _He thought you’d have more faith in him than this,’_ were the words that she had left Carrie with; they were words that were intended to hurt, and indeed they hit their mark. But what had stung the most was recognizing the closeness that Quinn shared with this woman, and realizing how little she actually knew about the colleague she trusted above all others.

 

With enough fishing around, she traced Quinn’s whereabouts in late 2008 to Copenhagen…. The German woman had not been lying. Carrie wondered bitterly what else they had shared together. An unwelcome image in her head of the two of them in bed together sent a jolt of electricity through her body.

 

Carrie held no claim over Quinn and she knew this.  She wasn’t a stranger to jealousy or insecurity, but the idea of feeling possessive of Quinn… It was foreign territory for her, at least until a couple of weeks ago.

 

For someone who had been at the agency for more than a decade, it struck her how little information there was to look into. Probably due to being black ops, she realized – leaving too much of a paper trail usually wasn’t ideal. She scrolled through a fair amount of information about the recent incident with Sandy, some of it written by Carrie herself. Several psych evals, the most recent one dating back two months. She skimmed through them, brow furrowed.

 

The evaluator’s notes were brief, but they gave enough information to paint a vivid picture. _PTSD, moderate to severe… Traumatic nightmares… Intrusive memories…. Reckless and aggressive behavior…. Depressive features…_

 

She exhaled a shuddering breath that she didn’t realize she had been holding. There were notes in the evaluation about the incident in Islamabad, accusations that Quinn had put her own life before Sandy’s. The psychologist insinuated that this could be caused by a current romantic involvement, or maybe just due to an infatuation.

 

The events of that day were still seared into her mind; when she closed her eyes she could still see herself stupidly trying to jump out of the car after Sandy. And then afterwards, she had goaded Quinn about not doing enough to save him. Even worse, she had begged him to return to Islamabad and help her, which he had done even in his poor mental state. Why hadn’t he just told her?

 

Tears burned a hot trail down her cheek as she thought about what she had put him though, what he was still going through. There was a physical aching in her chest. The flood gates had opened, and she couldn’t stop thinking about all the people she had let down, driven away, led to their deaths. Now there was no doubt in her mind that she could count Quinn on that list as well. It didn’t matter if what the German woman had said was true, that he would never be able to get out… If it weren’t for Carrie, he wouldn’t be in Islamabad again. He wouldn’t be trying to trade his life for the chance to bring down Haqqani.

 

Carrie picked up her phone and stared at it, blinking away tears to read the display. The last call she made was to Quinn’s German lover; a pathetic attempt at getting hold of him shortly after she got the news about her dad. She scrolled though to Quinn’s old cell number… He’d abandoned it when he had gone AWOL. Although the battery was dead, he hadn’t destroyed it yet.

 

Carrie dialed the number and put the phone to her ear, choking back a sob.  As adamant as she was to get him back, a small but growing part of her was beginning to believe that she might never see him alive again. She was desperate to just hear his voice, to feel grounded, to feel close to him even for a minute.

 

_“Hi, you’ve reached Peter Quinn. I’m not available…”_


	9. Happy Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quinn and Franny's first meeting; an attempt to fill in the blanks at how Quinn ended up on baby duty at the reception. Set during 4x12.

Carrie was nervous to introduce them but she couldn’t quite put a finger on the reason why.

At first, she thought it was just because of Brody's lingering memory. Carrie was finally starting to feel a connection to her daughter for the first time; she no longer looked at Franny and only saw a cruel reminder of all the things that Carrie would rather not confront. Every time she introduced Franny to someone who had known Brody though, Carrie worried that they might drag this connection back up to the surface. The last thing she needed right now was a thoughtless comment on Franny's striking physical resemblance to her dead father.

There was something else, though.

But as she handed Franny over to Quinn and watched the two of them together, all of her worries dissipated. Franny wrapped her tiny hand around Quinn’s finger; he grinned, his face lighting up in a way that Carrie had never seen before.

They sat together without speaking for a while, the comfortable silence interrupted by Franny’s delighted shrieks as Quinn made faces at her.

Carrie had never felt proud or excited to be a parent- she would listen to other women gush about motherhood and wonder if maybe she was broken somehow, incapable of being fixed. But for the first time, she found herself feeling hopeful about her future with her daughter. 

“There she is!”

Carrie had been so engrossed in watching Quinn and Franny that she didn’t notice the elderly woman slowly approaching them. She had thick glasses, with hair so gray that it nearly looked blue in the bright sunlight.

“I was hoping I’d get to see baby Franny today,” the woman said, taking a spot at the table with them. Quinn attempted to mask his irritation at being interrupted; he glanced at Carrie, trying to read the situation. He saw no sign of recognition in her face.

“I’m Rosie- your father and I sang in the church choir together for years. And this little one,” she said, reaching over and squeezing Franny’s leg, “used to come and visit us at the end of our rehearsals.” Carrie bit back a smile as she watched Quinn shift back and wrap a protective arm around Franny at the unexpected physical contact.

Her gaze suddenly turned somber as she addressed Carrie. “Caroline, I’m so sorry for your loss. I know how much your father cared about you two.”

She turned to look at Quinn, as if she had just noticed that he was there behind Franny. “And you must be Franny’s father,” she said as she surveyed him over her glasses. “You just make the most handsome family- I was admiring you as I walked over here. Just gorgeous.”

“Thank you, but…” Quinn began.

“Thank you.” Carrie cut him off, smiling and putting her hand on his knee.

\---

“Sorry about that,” Carrie muttered as the woman hobbled away. “The last thing I want to do today is get into a conversation about Franny’s fucked up dad situation.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” he said steadily. His eyes had shifted from Franny to Carrie’s hand, still lingering on his knee.

Quinn had faced perilous situations on a regular basis- it was part of the job description, and he had acclimated to this. But the thought of the three of them being mistaken for a normal, happy family… It caused more of an adrenaline rush than any assignment he could remember going on. Quinn closed his eyes, trying to hold onto the moment; he wanted to memorize everything about it, in case it never came again.

“I should go check on my sister,” Carrie said a few moments later, breaking contact with Quinn and standing up. “Just to make sure she doesn’t need any help inside.” Franny gurgled contentedly, oblivious to the tension in the air.

“I could take her for a bit, if you’d like,” Quinn suggested.

She surveyed him curiously. “You sure you don’t mind?”

Quinn laughed; Carrie noted how foreign the sound was to her. She racked her brain to find a time where she had seen him this happy before. It astounded her how relaxed, how content... How natural he looked with Franny in his arms.

"I'll come and get you right away if anything happens," Quinn said. He stood up, shifting Franny in his arms, and followed Carrie back to the house.

 

“Caroline?” Quinn said abruptly as they reached the kitchen. “Really?”

“I haven’t been ‘Caroline’ since I was about eight years old," Carrie said, furrowing her brow and scoffing. "Come to think of it, that's probably around the last time that woman saw me step foot inside a church service."

“I guess I never pictured you as a Caroline.”

“Yeah, well, you know what, Quinn?” she said, turning to him and smirking. “I can’t really picture you as a ‘Peter,’ so we’ll call it even.”


	10. After the Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m fascinated by the look on Carrie’s face as she walks away after the kiss. Here’s my take on what was going on there.
> 
> There's a good chance that this is the last vignette I'm going to post to this series... They've been so much fun to write, and it's a little sad to wrap it up. I'm starting to work on post-S4 multi-chapter story, so if you've got any feedback (positive or negative!) I'd love to hear it. Thanks for reading. :)

Carrie walked back to the house in a daze, shutting the door quietly so as not to wake Franny.

Her mind reeled. She felt dizzy from the combination of excitement, desire, and dread that was coursing through her. Maybe it was the whiskey, she rationalized- her tolerance seemed to have decreased significantly over the last few months.

She walked back into the kitchen towards her sister, who had resumed working her way through the massive pile of dishes from the afternoon. Carrie wordlessly joined her, drying plates and putting them away.

After several minutes, Maggie spoke.

“So, are you going to tell me what that was about?” she asked.

“Hmm?” Carrie responded absently. She had been so lost in her thoughts that she hardly registered that her sister had said anything at all.

“You friend, Peter,” Maggie clarified. “He seems nice.”

After several moments went by without a response, Maggie glanced up from the sink to see that Carrie had set her dishrag down; her head was bowed and her body shook with silent sobs.

“Oh, Carrie…” Maggie said soothingly, rushing over to her sister and putting an arm around her. She guided her to the table and pulled out a chair for her to sit down on. She put the kettle up for tea and sat down across from her sister, taking her hand and rubbing it comfortingly. It had been a long day and Maggie felt emotionally spent, but intuition told her that her sister needed her to stay present for a little bit longer.

“This isn’t about dad, is it?”

“I really care about him, Maggie…. And it scares the shit out of me,” she said desolately. Her eyes were red as she looked up at her sister. “I feel like I’m going to fuck things up no matter what choice I make.”

Maggie listened sympathetically, trying to piece together what must have just happened out in the street.

“Carrie, he’s crazy about you. You can see it every time he looks at you. What makes you say that you’ll mess things up?”

“Come on, Maggie, you’ve watched me fuck up every relationship I’ve ever been in. Either I cut and run when things get serious, or my illness gets to be too much and they leave so they don’t have to deal with it anymore.” She squeezed her eyes shut as more tears fell. “Quinn deserves better than that.”

Maggie placed a cup of chamomile tea in front of Carrie.

“Not every relationship is like mom and dad’s, you know,” she offered carefully. “Just because mom couldn’t handle dad’s condition doesn’t mean that your life is destined to be the same way.” It was Maggie’s turn to get misty-eyed as she addressed her sister intently. “Dad wouldn’t want that for you. He’d hate seeing you define yourself by your disorder, or write off a chance at being happy just because of it.”

“I spent so long believing that I was going to be alone for the rest of my life… Because of my job, because of the bipolar disorder, fuck… Just because of _who I am._ But today, at the wake… Fuck, Maggie. “ Carrie shook her head, laughing humorlessly and trying to find the words to express herself. “I know it's stupid, but for a second I just closed my eyes and pretended that we were one of those normal, happy families that you see in the park on a Sunday. “ Carrie’s face scrunched up again as the tears started to flow.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Everything,” Carrie responded, choking back a sob. “It was easier thinking that I’d never have that, than seeing it right in front of me and knowing that I’m too fucked up to make it happen.”

“You’ve been stable for a while now. You’ve been taking your meds…” Maggie rationalized.

Carrie cut her off, frustrated. “It’s only a matter of time, we both know that. The meds help, but they don’t guarantee that I’ll never have another episode.” She looked down at her hands. “I don’t want to put him through that, to make him feel responsible for me… I’ve put him through so much shit as it is.”

“How much does he know about your condition?”

Carrie scoffed and raised her eyebrows. “A lot. Too much, probably.”

“Then he knows what he’s getting into, and he wants you anyway.” Maggie smiled at her little sister knowingly. “It kind of sounds like you know what you want, too.”

Maggie and Carrie sat together in contemplative silence, drinking their tea.

Finally, Maggie spoke, grinning and attempting to lighten the mood. “He’s handsome, I’ll give you that. And Franny loves him.”

“Yeah,” Carrie said. She smiled wistfully, recalling the two of them together earlier that day.

“It’s been a long day,” Maggie said, mustering up a reassuring smile and moving their mugs to the sink. “Get some rest, okay? I’m sure things will be clearer in the morning.”


End file.
